


Before the Bullet

by awbucks



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mentions of canon typical violence, New Vegas, Poor kids, Wasteland, arcade is young, but they obviously live, courier is young, give it chance, i have my reasons, it's sad fluff, this is before the whole shot in the head incident
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 02:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8602891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awbucks/pseuds/awbucks
Summary: The Courier and Arcade knew each other before the Courier lost his memory...this is set then.  Before the bullet, before the battles, before their world changed.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Okay....so this is my first thing on aou....nevermind that though! This is just something I thought was cute...I might do more, we'll see :) For reference, Arcade and the Courier are about 18-ish in this. Since the Courier had amnesia, I figured I could play around with his past. Might be fun?  
> Oh and my courier's name is Ben. Agh I know, I totally forgot that a certain checkered-suited antagonist shares that name...well, nothing I can do now, right? Live and let live.  
> If there's anything I should tag, lemme know.  
> Thanks for checking it out!

Arcade and Ben had made the sorry mistake of trekking off the highway on their way back to Freeside. The past twelve hours had shaken the newly minted courier in a way he was ashamed of. With an almost franticness, he searched for Arcade in the dark. Their temporary campsite/shack they’d found for the night was close, but he still was skittish from the scene they’d seen a mere hour ago, as much as he hated to admit it.  
He lived in Vegas for god's sake, a group of dead fiends shouldn't have phased him. Since he'd first stepped foot out on the cracked concrete by himself, a mere two years ago, he'd kept his head down and only shot if a scorpion was really nipping at his ankles. He could be considered a pacifist, sure, people were people no matter how crazed, and he didn't intend on ending their lives even if they wanted to end his. Maybe, instead of holding to that standard of soft-heartedness, he should just give up the control he had over himself, if that’s even what it was. Thankfully, his fingers found Arcade’s and he intertwined them with his. Ben gave no attention to their physical contact, being two kids in the Wasteland meant tough veneers and no soft edges. No weakness. He began to quietly ramble into the humid twlight. 

“There was just so much blood, Arcade! They’re-all of ‘em, shots to the chest!” Arcade frowned at Ben’s distress. It wasn’t common for a near adult to be crying over dead strangers, but Ben had always been empathetic to even the worst of them. A fatal flaw for New Vegas but a god-damned human one as well. Seeing Ben’s eyes glistening, a couple fresh tears rolling down his nose, Arcade lifted the sleeve of his new Follower’s of the Apocalypse coat and wiped his cheeks carefully.  
He’d finally gotten accepted to the group, much to his relief, finally, he hoped, finally, he could let go of his past. Ben half-smiled at Arcade’s gesture, his glasses smudged and crooked on his broken nose. He was still holding Arcade’s hand, gripping tighter than before. 

“Thanks,” Ben mumbled, sitting down in the dirt outside the shack. Arcade followed suit, stretching his legs out in front of him. 

“I know it shouldn’t bother me, but…” Ben rested his head on Arcade’s shoulder, sniffling softly. 

“It does.” He finished, so terribly quiet that Arcade wouldn’t have heard him if he was not as close as he was. Arcade cleared his throat, looking straight ahead. 

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing.” He had a strong sense of morals himself. Hell, he wouldn’t have joined the Followers if he hadn’t. Helping people seemed to be in his blood, putting everyone else before getting to his own needs. 

“It just shows that you care. That you still feel something, y’know?” Ben nodded, burying his head deeper into the folds of Arcade’s lab coat. 

“How am I gonna survive though? Y’can’t be an angel out here. It’s already hell, ain’t it?” Arcade wrapped his arms around the other teen and the disguised the pain in his voice with his signature dry tone. 

“Well, far as I know, neither of us are dead, so hell’s gonna have to wait.” Ben huffed into his chest, straightening back up, taking his glasses off and attempting to clear them of the desert sand. Once they were somewhat acceptable, he slid them back on and turned towards Arcade, eyes meeting for a moment before he gently eased his glasses off, cleaning them with a worn rag he kept grit-free for this very purpose. After inspecting them under the lantern light, Ben leaned back over to Arcade, easing the frames up his nose, looping them behind his ears with careful fingers, letting them linger on his jaw.  
Dark eyes, flecked with grey staring into Arcade’s steely blue ones for a quiet moment, pressing his lips to the young doctor’s forehead, and then his temple. Arcade felt a pleasant warmth blossom in his chest when Ben kissed him. He gently wrapped a hand around Ben’s forearm, allowing the moment of calm to stretch a little longer. 

“I’m going to bed, okay?” Ben muttered softly, voice in that uneasy place of fragility- one word brave, the next broken. He pulled back and rose, shuffling into the shack, leaving Arcade alone to lean against the rusting corrugated metal. He looked up at the stars- a muddled mess of smog and thousand year old light.  
Arcade rubbed his eyes and sighed, pulling himself off the ground, and stepped into the shack, bringing the lantern in and setting it near Ben and his bedrolls. He shrugged his coat off and neatly folded it, laying it beside Ben’s duster and glasses. He blew the lantern out and slipped under the quilt stretched between the two mattresses. Before shutting his eyes, Arcade checked on Ben, head of thick brown hair cropped to his ears, shoulders painfully tight under the blanket.  
Still shaken up, huh? He’d read about how things were pre-war, and Arcade couldn’t help but feel an ebbing hatred towards those people who dropped bombs on each other creating a nuclear wasteland for their children. They all had green grass and clean cities and justice systems, hell, they’re supermarkets were stocked! It was a society of constant production and progress, efficiency and commercialism. Safer than the lawless desert they scraped by in now. Before the war, his father would have been a hero...a veteran. Not a member of some crazed faction stripped out of society. He’d be alive. Arcade let out a huff and attempted to clear his mind that seemed to be blowing through ideas a mile a minute. Nothing he could do about what had happened two hundred years ago. The only spot he could look to was the future, work to make that better, rather than repeat the past.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it. I really love the NV characters, especially Arcade. haha...well, thanks for reading


End file.
